The Swiss Chemical Society has awarded the "Sandmeyer Award 2012 - sponsored by KPMG" to a research team from Solvias. Working for Sanofi Pasteur, the team developed an innovative, efficient and fully synthetic process for protoporphyrin IX, a precursor of hemoglobin.

"We are honoring the conceptually innovative and industrially developed synthesis of porphyrins," says Prof. E. Kündig, President of the Swiss Chemical Society (SCS), justifying the decision. "These preparations are completely free from impurities of animal origin, which represents a significant improvement in the production of protoporphyrin IX derivatives."

The research team is made up of Dr. Dirk Spielvogel, Dr. Dietmar Flubacher, Dr. Andreas Boudier, Markus Müller and Dr. Pierre Martin from the Chemical Development and Catalysis department at Solvias.

An essential component of vaccine production

Protoporphyrin IX is an essential co-factor in the biotechnological vaccine production process at Sanofi Pasteur. Changes to the law relating impurities of animal origin made it impossible to use this substance, which is extracted from blood. However, the researchers found an effective alternative in just a few months: they developed a fully synthetic means of access, which resulted - among other things - in the first substance samples for biotechnological process validation.

The research team has succeeded in establishing a process that dispenses entirely with downstream oxidation and thus with the associated costly purification processes. This innovation makes it possible to achieve scalable chemistry and thus the delivery capacity necessary for commercial vaccine production.